Dave in Green

There are really only 3 options available to define the recruiting value of any LeBron connection to Zips basketball, no matter how weak or how strong LeBron's personal commitment may be: 1) It has some kind of positive effect, ranging from barely measurable to strong. 2) It has absolutely no effect at all. 3) It has some kind of negative effect, ranging from barely measurable to strong. Option 2 is actually the least likely, because LeBron's image is so strong with the general public that it almost certainly must have some kind effect on most aspiring young basketball players. They might like him or they might hate him, but it's highly unlikely that the majority of them are not somehow influenced in some way by him. Option 3 is less likely than option 1. There is always a small number of people who go against the grain, whatever the grain might be. So if the biggest name in basketball is connected with Zips basketball in even the slighest way, a few players are going to take it as a negative and say that they don't want anything to do with anything remotely related to LeBron. By process of elimination, that leaves option 1 as the most likely, with the big question being where on the positive scale of barely measurable to strong. Even if it's barely measurable, why would anyone want to give up any recruiting edge, no matter how tiny? If anyone has a logical process that leads to a different conclusion, I'd be interested in hearing the rationale.

Economics for dummies is always fun. Seems as if the major change is that less money from the Cleveland area will be flowing into LeBron's bank account, to be replaced by more money from the Miami area flowing into LeBron's bank account. The Cavs organization and local companies with heavy dependence on business directly related to the Cavs will also take some kind of financial hit. Nobody really knows how much. Nobody really knows how loyal Cavs fans will remain to the Cavs minus LeBron. Any money that does not flow through the Cavs organization and other businesses with heavy dependence on business directly related to the Cavs should primarily flow into other areas of the greater Cleveland area economy. A small amount of local money that would ordinarily flow through the Cleveland economy will be diverted through Miami and into LeBron's bank account by hardcore local LeBron fans who are compelled to purchase Miami Heat gear.

Good for LeBron. We can only hope that he continues to do good things for his hometown. Going back to Jason Whitlock's Fox Sports column expressing distaste for Jackson's remarks, here's why I agree with Whitlock: Slavery happened. Slavery was bad. Slavery is distant history. Prejudice happened. Prejudice was bad. Prejudice still happens. Prejudice is still bad. But if a white man treats a black man the same way he would treat a white man (or vice versa), it ain't prejudice, and it's not remotely connected with slavery. The only way Jesse Jackson is right is if Dan Gilbert would have reacted any differently if LeBron were white. Given identical circumstances, I personally don't believe that Gilbert would have reacted any differently if the player was Larry Bird, and if Larry Bird had been born in Akron, and if Larry Bird had done exactly the same things that LeBron did. That's just my personal opinion based on all the data I've seen. Different people with different perspectives will see it differently.

It's really interesting to read what one African-American sports writer has to say about the mountain of e-mails he's getting from African-American sports fans in reaction to Jesse Jackson playing the slavery card: Fox Sports Link

I'm with Dr Z. McNees at the point until someone proves to KD that they can earn the job away. Most of us thought that Hitchens or Steward were going to do exactly that. But they never were able to convince KD they could do the job better than McNees. I think we all agree that the Zips become a better team if Abreu can play the point better overall than McNees, which allows McNees to spend more time at shooting guard. One does not have to be a McNees "worshipper" to acknowledge that he has done a good job as a combo guard filling in at the point in the absence of a true point guard with the ability to earn the position away.

Is anyone surprised that a retired player like Walker would support the players over the owners? Duh! And special acknowledgement to Walker for joining the hyperbole wars and trivializing the horrific concept of "lynching" by applying it to the battle of words between the basketball multimillionaires. What would these guys be saying if the owner was black and the player was white? Here's my problem with what's going on. I love the concept of checks and balances in almost every aspect of life, from government to sports. No single group of people in any endeavor has all the right answers. If a single group gets total control of anything, they'll mess it up, because all people and all groups of people are imperfect. The only salvation is when the checks and balances of opposing powers keeps a single group from screwing things up in perpetuity. I don't think that having the players pull all the strings is any better than allowing the owners total control. There are rules against the owners colluding to get an unfair advantage over the players. But what happens if the players take advantage of the system to gain unfair advantage over the owners? In either case, it's the fans who suffer the consequences. We all know the basic rule from childhood sports that when you pick sides for a playground basketball game, you take turns choosing. If you let one side pick the first 5 players and the other side get the 5 leftovers, you end up with a non-competitive game. If you want good competition, you don't allow all the best players to end up on the same team. Give NBA players complete freedom, and chances are it won't take long for many of the best players to find a way to get together on a super team in a glamorous warm weather location. It takes intelligent, well-enforced rules to prevent this from happening. Since people are good at eventually finding ways to take advantage of static rules, someone has to be smart enough to evolve the rules to stay ahead of all the multimillionaire smarties continuously looking for loopholes. So, as a fan, I say to the NBA: You jokers better find a way to keep this from getting out of control. Because when the fans in places like Cleveland, Detroit, Minneapolis and all the other unglamorous cities see all the best players making private alliances to ditch their unglamorous teams and migrate to the glamour spots to play together, the fans are going to quit spending their money locally to support a losing cause. If the NBA does not continue to modify the rules to ensure that they favor the fans -- all of the fans, not just those in the glamour locations -- over both the owners and the players, they are headed toward a serious problem of their own making.

I suppose with all the hyperbole flying around, it would be too much to expect Jesse Jackson to stand quietly on the sidelines. Honestly, slavery is one of the sorriest chapters in American history, and the civil rights movement is one of America's shining moments. But to equate squabbling multi-millionaires with slaves and slave owners trivializes the brutal ugliness of slavery and the courage and righteousness of the civil rights movement in the same way that petty politicians trivialize the ghastly horror of Hitler and Nazi Germany by trying to label their opponents as Nazis. We sports fans are all guilty of putting entirely too much power and money in the hands of already wealthy team owners and the ever wealthier prima donna athletes who could care less about the championship aspirations of the petty peasants who pay all the bills. We fans should be smart enough to take a cue from the elite sports royalty and only be in it for ourselves. Do we sports fans even have a clue about what's best for us? Are there any rules or laws to prevent us from colluding?

This is definitely not going to stop being 24/7 for a long time. The investigation into how this all came about is just getting started. There could be a lot of coincidence or a lot of collusion. But the two stories below suggest there is at least circumstantial evidence to suggest a hint of collusion. This may just blow over, or it could get extraordinarily ugly: Bleacher Report Story Plain Dealer Story

Good advice. UA can't afford to pick sides in this fight. It must serve as much of the greater community as it can, and not risk alienating any significant part of the community by rubbing their noses in something they find distasteful. A large number of people find any glorification of LeBron pretty distasteful right now, and others find it distatesful to dump on the hometown hero simply for switching teams.

Like it or not, STZ has a really valid point with this thread. There is going to be a lot of animosity toward LeBron from a lot of people even if some don't feel it quite as intensely, and a few act as if nothing at all has happened. LeBron's connection with the Zips used to be mostly positive, or neutral at worst. That equation has now changed. I don't think any of us really know how it's going to all work out. It may be that LeBron will increase his support of Akron in general and UA in particular, in which case Zips fans might be a little more forgiving. Then again, he might not do anything differently, or he might pull back from Akron and start giving more support to the Miami community. Right now we're all just speculating. We don't know how this will play out. But we do know that it's not likely to ever be the way it was. Good question for the folks at UA to ponder, STZ.

Well, there's actually a big diversity of opinion even here on ZN.O. Some folks sound like they want to tar and feather LeBron, and some sound like they can't wait to get their Miami Heat gear. Maybe we'll start seeing Heat gear at Zips games. I'm about in the middle. I'm disappointed but not angry. I'll probably feel about the same watching LeBron in the future as I do Kobe Bryant now. It's always entertaining to watch athletes who are the best at what they do. But most of them are mercenaries who are only temporarily loyal to the team they happen to be with at the moment. Either they jump from team to team looking for a better deal, or their teams trade them away looking for a better deal. So who has less loyalty, the players who jump from team to team in search of something better or the teams that constantly trade players in search of something better? There are only a few cases where a player and team remain loyal to each other throughout the players' careers. So we can feel warm and fuzzy about those few and wish that LeBron had been one of them.

After a lot of reading and a lot of thinking about what happened, I've come to the following realization. We all know that LeBron is a really special basketball player who happened to be born, raised, and become famous in Akron. The dream scenario continued when the Cavs lucked into drafting him, he developed into one of the very best ever to play the game, and helped the Cavs become one of the best teams in the NBA. The dream would have been complete if LeBron had defied the norm of star athletes ditching the snow belt for glamour locations, remained a Cav for life, and led the Cavs to one or more NBA championships. It was at this point that he failed the greatest dream of so many Ohio sports fans and ditched the team with the best record in the NBA over the past two seasons to go to a glamour location with his other star buddies who were unwilling to sacrifice the good life to play for a snowbelt team. In this he is not so special, but just like so many other physically gifted professional athletes who want a big helping of glitz and glamour along with the millions of dollars they get from the working stiff fans. Without the paying fans, they're just a bunch of amateurs shooting at rusty rims without nets on a playground somewhere. Bernie Kosar is, to me, a good example of a special player and a special person. A stellar athlete who always dreamed of leading a Cleveland team to greatness, he never dreamed of ditching his local team. Although he was from Youngstown, he never wanted to play for any team but the Browns. He was a college star at a glamour school (mighty Miami in Florida), and many NFL glamour teams wanted him. But he made it clear that he only wanted to play for the Browns, and he made it happen. He gave it everything he had, and was a highly rated NFL quarterback. But a combination of his slow foot speed and a porous offensive line resulted in his body taking a beating and eventually breaking down. He still bleeds Cleveland sports to this day. Kosar fought off tears watching LeBron announce his big decision. "I would have loved to sit down and talk to him. I tried at times, but I was never able to get to him," Kosar said. "He has a lot of people around him." ( Kosar Link ). Kevin Durant is another good example special player and a special person. He led the NBA in scoring, and would have been the number one target for all the glamour teams when his rookie contract ran out. But Durant signed a 5-year contract extension with no opt out clause with the far from glamorous Oklahoma City Thunder. He announced it with a simple, informal Twitter. He's not only a great player with tremendous talent, but a modest man with strong values and tremendous loyalty to an NBA team who he feels has taken good care of him and his family. Like so many others living in the Akron/Cleveland area, I personally hoped that LeBron would prove over time to be a special person in addition to being a great athlete. In my mind, he's still a better person than many of his contemporaries. But with this move he lowered himself a few notches on the scale. So it's a disappointment to me, and I can never feel the same about LeBron the person as I once did. I'm not losing any sleep over it. In fact, I'm surprised at how quickly I've bounced back and started anticipating what the Cavs will do to become a better team. I have no malice toward LeBron. He did what he thought would be best for himself as so many others do on a daily basis. That's precisely why it's so special when someone does things that go beyond that, and why it was understandable but still disappointing that LeBron did not. Thank goodness for the Bernie Kosars and Kevin Durants of the world.

Interesting concept. We are Akronites above all. Screw Cleveland. Screw Ohio. Screw the rest of the world except people from those areas we deem to be special. But why not take it further? There are good and bad areas of Akron, so let's gerrymander the bad areas out and only pull for people from the designated good areas. Of course MY neighborhood is the best, so put it at the top of the list. You don't think so? Screw you. Or how about further yet. Some of the people in my neighborhood are jerks, so exclude them. I'll make a list of people from acceptable properties, and screw the rest. Or we can get really extreme. Some of the people who live in my house are jerks, so we'll exclude them. I'll make a list of acceptable family members, and screw the rest. Sounds like the kind of elitist attitude that would make a great ESPN special on how to separate royalty from peasants. Or maybe we can outdo ESPN right here on ZN.O.

At one time that may have been true. Sometimes things remain the same and sometimes they change. After the way he chose to ditch the Cavs, I find it hard to understand how anyone can have any reasonable level of confidence that he might not act the same way in the future with others. Again, based on the way he chose to ditch the Cavs, I think that everything about him is now open to skepticism. For example, unlike other professional athletes, it just so happened that the NBA team in his backyard happened to luck into the first draft pick when he was available. So by pure circumstance, and not by some grand plan, he got to live near his old hometown, hang tight with his old buddies, and contribute some things that other pros who've moved away from their hometowns haven't. What would have happened if Miami had the first draft choice and selected LeBron. Would he have been contributing as much to Akron? Or would he already have ditched everything related to Ohio and be basking in the glory of being the King of South Beach? In the absence of answers to these questions, I personally have no confidence in predicting what he might do to anyone anytime.

Dan Gilbert and LeBron James are both wealthy, powerful men who are used to getting their ways. So I take anything either says with a grain of salt. I don't know that Gilbert has a history of reacting like this in similar situations. It may be he does, or it may be that he feels especially aggrieved by the way this whole affair was handled. So it will be interesting when more details come out, like the point that LeBron has not responded to a single contact by the Cavs since the season ended. In any case, Gilbert's statement accurately reflects the feelings of many Cavs fans, so he clearly establishes a strong bond with them by saying what he did the way he did. The Cavs have now returned to their previous position as underdogs, and maybe that's not such a bad thing. I think back to the Brad Daugherty, Larry Nance, Mark Price, Hot Rod Williams and Ron Harper team with a lot of fondness. They didn't win an NBA championship, but they could have, and they were fun to watch as a team while they were trying. I'd be happy to see a balanced Cavs team like that again, and I hope that's what Gilbert tries to accomplish.

The only way? So, if LeBron decides for any reason that Miami is a nicer place to live on a permanent basis, it would be Akronites' fault for not giving him enough unconditional worship to keep him here? That's a pretty heavy guilt trip to try to lay on the people of Akron, and I doubt that many will buy into it. Let's be honest here. None of us really knows what's going to happen next. LeBron could remain loyal to Akron until the day he dies, or he could discover that Miami is his true hometown and ditch Akron completely, or anything in between. But it's all up to LeBron, not to us. He's no longer a physically precocious kid. He's an adult who is responsible for his own actions, good, bad or indifferent.

What makes anyone think that LeBron is going to remain loyal to Akron after he's lived in Miami for a few winters? He said the final step in feeling OK about his decision was when his mother told him he had to do what was right for him. So consider the whole loyalty thing in light of being loyal to oneself. If LeBron decides it's the right thing for him to completely ditch Ohio altogether, including Akron, and adopt Miami or somewhere else as his new home, it would just be another way of proving that he's loyal to himself.

You are wicked bad.

And people in other parts of the country are not falling all over each other to out-kiss Ohioans?

What, me worry? My "ulcers" comment was followed by a . I don't have ulcers; I give ulcers. Good point about Zeke's early season aches and pains. Not only does that slow a player on the court, it also slows down physical workouts, which can lead to tiring more quickly.

Maybe the reporter left Henniger's name out because it's so hard to spell correctly. Seriously, Henniger's name may have been mentioned somewhere in the course of the interview and just left out of the story. Reporters typically listen to many hundreds and even thousands of words, and have to distill it down to a few dozen quoted words for the final story.

Oh darn. Now we'll have to find another rumor to cultivate our ulcers. But, seriously, it would be interesting to know more about the Zips diet, strength and conditioning program. I know we've had many discussions about some players looking winded after relatively brief stints, and others playing long minutes and apparently still having spring in their legs. At the beginning of last season, for example, Zeke appeared to slow down after being on the floor for awhile. As the season went on, you could see Zeke's stamina growing along with his biceps. Toward the end of the season, Zeke looked like he would be good for 30 minutes per game or more. If Zeke is staying on that same diet, strength and conditioning program during the off-season, he will certainly move closer to realizing the dominant force potential that everyone sees in him. But what about the rest of the team? McNees is like the Energizer bunny who never seems to slow down, which always makes him a threat to score at the end of a tight game as he's demonstrated at the Q. Cvetinovic, on the other hand, still appears to play in spurts that leave him exhausted. Overall team fitness is a good topic, because a team that's in better physical condition and with better endurance will generally have an increasing advantage as the game wears on and their opponents are wearing down.

Over many years of following basketball, I've seen players who were too skinny, too fat, not strong enough, and too muscle-bound to have coordinated moves. Each player has an ideal overall weight and an ideal muscle-to-fat ratio. I have enough faith in KD and his coaching staff to think that they are not pushing any of their players in the wrong direction. Maybe someone with some inside knowledge can tell us something about the Zips conditioning staff. They're really the ones responsible for getting each player on a specific diet and conditioning program to reach their optimum physical condition.

Spin, I was beginning to wonder if you were ever going to realize that I was not trying to trash soccer. I appreciate your passion for the sport, and I also appreciate that you understand that not everyone who makes critical comments about soccer has evil intent. To be clear, I was not suggesting that American soccer be changed to make it more exciting to people who like to see a little more balance between offensive scoring and defensive stifling. The only way this works is if international soccer changes. But I don't think it will. I think the rest of the world is happy with soccer the way it is today, and doesn't want it to change. Like any sport, soccer is an acquired taste, and enough people in the world have acquired the taste for what it currently is that there's no chance of changing it from the low-scoring defensive struggle it is today. The best hope for soccer in America is that future generations acquire the same taste in sports that international audiences have developed.

OK, let me say a few positive things about soccer. I really like the fact that UA has such a great soccer program. I have relatives and friends who enjoy soccer, and it gives me something to talk about with them. They're all impressed with what UA has accomplished. It's always cool to have a top-ranked team in any sport near where you live -- certainly better than a losing team. I occasionally read about soccer, and occasionally watch it on TV, the same way that I occasionally read about and watch other sports that don't hold a huge interest for me. I don't hate soccer. I don't even dislike it. I'm content to sit and watch soccer on TV when my soccer-crazy friends and relatives visit my home. It just doesn't move me the way some other sports do. So while I couldn't be called a true blue soccer fan, I certainly qualify as a casual observer of soccer, as I'm a casual observer of many other sports that don't really excite me but don't completely turn me off, either. Regarding the subject of this thread, I do think UA should try to capitalize on the increased interest in soccer created by the U.S. team in World Cup, even though they eventually lost. UA has made the investment in putting together a national championship caliber soccer team, and it's important to get the word out to as many soccer fans in Ohio as possible. With Ohio sports fans, UA should be to college soccer what OSU is to college football. This may even help attract new fans to soccer. Attracting new fans is always good -- certainly better than ignoring potential soccer fans or. worse, trying to drive them away.